Occult Rituals

It’s a common belief that only those initiated in the rites and practices of arcane, divine, or psychic magic can cast spells, but this is not strictly true. Hidden within dusty libraries and amid the ramblings of lunatics lie the mysteries of another form of spellcasting—occult ritual magic. These spells are rare, coveted by both those eager to gain their power and those wishing to hide their existence. Most traditional spellcasters consider these rituals dangerous and uncontrollable, something to be avoided or used as a last resort. They fear the power these ceremonies grant to the uninitiated, as the rituals allow those with only a glimmering of understanding the ability to interact with the underlying fabric of magic.

While anyone can attempt to cast occult rituals, the process is fraught with peril. The strange and intricate incantations are often challenging to perform with precision, and failure can weaken the casters or even unleash horrors upon the world. Even when successfully performed, each occult ritual has a price—a backlash that affects at least the caster leading the ritual, and often those assisting in its performance.Click here for the full rules on Occult Rituals.

Effect

This ritual must be performed in a place that holds a significance related to weapons, such as an armory, an old battlefield, or a warrior’s crypt. The primary caster begins this ritual by mixing her blood with the diamond dust, smearing each weapon with the mixture, and placing the weapons in a circle around herself. The primary caster then holds each weapon and demonstrates the weapon in a combat performance. After the primary caster finishes her performance with a weapon, she places the weapon into the air in front of her, now held in midair by her force of ego.

Upon successful completion of this ritual, ghostly apparitions of the primary caster appear and grasp each of the weapons before fading, representing the shards of the primary caster’s own ego placed within each weapon. The egoist weapons are treated as if they are held by the primary caster, using her base attack bonus, ability scores, and any relevant feats when calculating their attack and damage rolls, but the weapons function independently from the primary caster. Egoist weapons make attacks on the primary caster’s initiative. When moving, egoist weapons have a fly speed of 100 feet. An egoist weapon uses the statistics of the base weapon and retains its magical enhancements and material properties. For every 2 Hit Dice the primary caster has, an egoist weapon has a hardness of 10 and 5 hit points (magical weapons maintain their additional bonuses to AC and HP). When an egoist weapon is reduced to 0 hit points, it is destroyed.

All casters who were part of the ritual can issue simple commands to the egoist weapons, and the weapons follow these commands to the best of their abilities. If an egoist weapon completes its task and does not receive further orders, it remains in its location until it receives additional orders. The primary caster can dispel an individual egoist weapon as a standard action. This ritual can be used to create more than four egoist weapons. The DC of each skill check increases by 1 for each weapon beyond the fourth added to the ritual.